


Regrets Collect

by FyrMaiden



Category: Glee
Genre: Depression, Gen, Infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-28
Updated: 2012-10-28
Packaged: 2017-11-17 05:25:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/548077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrMaiden/pseuds/FyrMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When guilt about Eli overtakes him, Blaine turns to Cooper for courage, comfort, and absolution.</p><p>(4x04 related, spoilers)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Regrets Collect

**Author's Note:**

> I have a terrible tendency to write in run on sentences. Usually, I spend a lot of my time editing them back out again. This contains one hell of a run on sentence within the opening block. I did break it up, and then I decided to leave it as it was - Cooper's vaguely intoxicated, and I figured it showed his haze better than if I wrote it properly. All other examples are exactly why I should have a beta.
> 
> My point here being, as ever, this comes completely unbeta'd. I take full responsibility for all anachronisms, repetitiveness, spelling mistakes, and inaccuracies. :D

It’s an unrecognised Ohio number on his caller ID for the fourth time in three hours that makes Cooper finally press the accept button, but it’s the choked sound of relief that answers his terse “What?” that makes him wish he’d answered sooner. If Blaine is calling then something is very wrong, and if Blaine is calling him so close to tears that he can barely speak then Cooper owes it to him to listen. It’s got to be edging 2am in Ohio, and Cooper’s hazy on an obnoxious mix of beer and spirits but he’s relatively sure that makes it very early on Thursday morning, so the kid should be tucked up asleep in his best Wonder Woman pyjamas or whatever he wears now. Probably nothing, Cooper reflects, remembering his first girlfriend and being 17, not since the tall glass of milk that Blaine calls his boyfriend entered his life, which brings him naturally to, “How’s Kurt?” and that’s obviously the wrong question because Blaine huffs a broken laugh and says he doesn’t know - he doesn’t _fucking_ know, sorry - because Kurt takes less of his calls than Cooper does and he’s done something awful to him besides. Like, truly awful, unforgivable kind of awful. Cooper wouldn’t be the first to admit it but he’d certainly agree that he doesn’t know too much about his baby brother. He does know one thing, though, and it’s that Blaine’s not actually capable of anything that would leave him permanently unredeemable. Still, the floodgate has broken and Blaine’s talking so fast now that Cooper can’t understand half of the words (it’s been a long night and it should have a few more good hours in it, if he’s honest), but he can almost see the snotty tears over the phone and has to stop him.

“Blaine, buddy, you need to slow down,” he says, loud enough to stop Blaine dead. He makes an excuse to the closest person listening and heads outside onto the balcony so he can hear Blaine more clearly. “Do you want me to come home?” 

A sniff and then, “No,” and a beat, “Yes?” Cooper listens to the silence as Blaine tries to compose himself, something he’s always been scarily good at. Blaine doesn’t let people see him hurting, a fact it has taken Cooper far too long to fully comprehend (in fact, it’s only been in the past few months that he really _has_ understood it). “Maybe,” Blaine says eventually, calmer, his voice rough and quiet and cracking where the tears want to be. “I can’t tell Mom, and you know how Dad is about this. About me.”

Cooper does know, only too well. He’d already left for the bright lights of LA by the time Blaine came out, but he remembers coming back that summer to find his father and his kid brother under the hood of a clapped out Chevy, Blaine grinning through the engine grease and their dad cursing mildly when the damn thing still refused to turn over. Cooper didn’t think Blaine really understood what was going on at the time, but a couple of years and some understanding of how the world viewed him had helped hammer the message home. Their dad would rather Blaine was straight, normal, as easy to know and understand as Cooper is, and Blaine’s never going to be that. It’s difficult for both of them; their dad doesn’t hate Blaine but he doesn’t understand him either, and Blaine’s a 17 year old kid who really needs his parents. Cooper feels his intoxicated heart reach out. He’s in the entertainment industry; half of the men and a few of the women that he knows are various degrees of gay and various degrees of out to go with it. He can do this for his baby brother now.

“How about I see if I can get back for Saturday?” he asks, “You can tell me then.”

Blaine sniffs, and says he can’t think about this now. His head hurts like someone is sitting inside of it with a vice, squeezing his brain and hammering at his skull, and he’s tired anyway. Cooper suspects guilt is playing its part, for whatever it is Blaine thinks he’s done, but he says, softly, that Blaine should try to sleep. No matter what he’s done it can’t be as bad as all of this. Blaine’s the most morally uptight teenager Cooper has ever met (which is more of a credit to their nanny than to their parents) and so he knows without question that whatever Blaine has done is not as terrible as he thinks.

“Saturday, titch,” he says affectionately, “You can make notes if it will help.”

Blaine’s breathing evens infinitesimally, and Cooper smiles to himself. They may not have been close when Blaine was growing up, but Cooper has learned enough about him to know how to calm and center him. Rules, guidelines, set parameters, small tasks; Blaine craves micro-management and falls apart without it and, if Cooper’s still being honest, he thinks Kurt should know that as well.

 

In the end, Cooper manages to get a flight that has him back in Lima before school is finished on Friday afternoon. He debates waiting for Blaine to get home but decides that the kid on the phone the night before last hadn’t sounded like he needed space. Blaine had sounded like he needed someone to see him for once. Cooper is used to the casual confidence of the Dalton version of his brother, the one who’d had boys like Wes and David to look up to and emulate. (He may not have taken an active role in Blaine’s life, but he’s got updates from their mom because he’s always known Blaine has the potential to be a supernova with the right motivation.) He suspects the problem is that Blaine is still trying to be that boy, and no one can see he’s not really that at all. Blaine’s poker face is, perhaps, too good. Making a decision, Cooper heads back to their parents’ house, packs an overnight bag for Blaine, figuring that getting him out of Lima might help. Lima is, afterall, where the memories are, and it’ll be easier to talk to him if he’s not choking on the tension. He purloins their dad’s ostentatious (“Midlife-crisis on wheels,” Blaine’s text had said when their dad brought it home, “He’s overcompensating for his queer son and his fucked up marriage.”) BMW and pulls up in the McKinley parking lot just as the final bell rings.

It’s as high school age kids pour out of the buildings that Cooper realises he has no idea what Blaine’s school schedule is. He knows there must still be Glee Club in there somewhere, but Blaine is a joiner and he’s got a lot of time to fill now that Kurt’s not there to pick up the slack between school finishing and him having to be home for another uncomfortable Anderson dinner where they sit in high backed chairs and eat carefully arranged vegetables with silver cutlery, hold stilted conversations where they're casually disinterested in one another's lives, and have just the right amount of low level background music. ("Musak," Blaine corrected Kurt once when he'd commented on it as they were clearing the table. "I've heard better music on hold to the DMV." Kurt had laughed, his face lighting up, which had caused Blaine to grin back at him and reach for his hand. Cooper couldn't remember ever seeing the kid so free.)

When it turns 4 and Blaine has still not emerged, Cooper decides it’s time to brave the maze of McKinley corridors for the second time in his adult life. He locks the car and checks it carefully, because his cell has a lot of important email addresses in it, and Blaine’s case is in the trunk with some ridiculously expensive shades and what clean clothes Cooper could grab whilst fielding their mother’s queries about how long he would be staying and what happened to that nice girl he was seeing, Melody or Melanie or “Melissa, Mom, and it wasn’t a serious thing, we have some fun, we’re not getting married.” He wishes they could see that, of the two of them, Blaine is actually the kid they’d always wanted. And it’s the future now; if they could overcome their own prejudices, they still have a child whose damn wedding they can plan and whose children they can keep lists of potential names for – all of the things they planned before Blaine came out to them they can still have, if they could get past the flashing neon sign that tells them they’re only marking time until Blaine tells them he’s dying. Cooper wishes they could see what they’re doing to Blaine, but then, if wishes were horses he figures he’d have one that could fly, since life granted him a unicorn gratis. 

There’s no one in the choir room when Cooper reaches it, and he leans against the door jam for a long moment as he stares at the risers. Blaine hadn’t been happy last year when he’d been here, but that had been more about Cooper than anything, and how hard Blaine tries to be what everyone expects him to be at the expense of being himself. Less than a year later, though, he’s called Cooper willingly so perhaps things are improving. Hauling himself back upright and into the hall, he heads towards the auditorium. It’s not a sure fire plan, but the Blaine on the phone on Wednesday night had been the kind of Blaine that makes grand gestures, who can only open up with song, and if the choir room is empty then he’s probably on the stage instead. He’d stop someone and ask (or even try and call him, except his phone is back in the car and he’s not going back to get it), but the corridors are curiously deserted, even for the time of day. Then he spots a familiar face ambling towards him, wide grin and blonde hair ringing a bell but he can’t remember the name. He meets a lot of people, and he only vaguely remembers most of them, but he’s almost certain that the boy smiling at him is a friend of Blaine’s. It’s confirmed when the boy says, “Hey, Cooper, right? Thank God. I didn’t think he was listening when I said he should talk to you...”

“Where is he?” Cooper asks, not deliberately meaning to derail the kid, but eager to get Blaine away. They’ve got a late reservation at a restaurant in Columbus that has their dad’s credit card all over it, and the car has a full tank and cruises at a flat ton so he’d really like to get going.

“Auditorium,” the kid says, a troubled look crossing his easy features. Cooper turns on his best charm smile and an answering one creeps slowly back onto the boy’s face again until they’re half smiling at one another, eyes troubled but demeanour easy. And then, “Hey, Coop? I don’t – he didn’t _do_ anything, I don’t think? He won’t say but -”

“But Blaine, right?”

A nod and a flicker of concern underneath the smile and Cooper’s heart reaches out. Whether Blaine sees it or not, there’s at least one person at McKinley who doesn’t hate him.

 

Getting Blaine out of the school and into the car turns out to be harder work than Cooper had banked on. Blaine says he just wants to go home. He’s got a lot of homework, and he’s tired, and he’s hungry, and he’s –

“Too busy hating himself to listen?” Cooper interjects, and Blaine focuses on him with narrowed eyes for a moment before laughing softly.

“I feel like I’m dying,” he offers, and Cooper nods, pulling him into a hug that he refuses to let go of until Blaine’s arms wrap around him as well, holding him tight as his breathing stutters and he fights not to cry again. Cooper rests his chin on Blaine’s head and rubs his back affectionately, and Blaine pulls away slowly, swiping at his face.

“Let’s get out of here,” Cooper says, and this time Blaine nods, brittle smile missing his eyes entirely.

They spend the majority of the drive in silence, only the relentlessly cheerful bubblegum sweetness of the radio filling the void, until Cooper hears Blaine’s breath hitch painfully again, his fingers reaching out to turn the song up just as Katy Perry quavers through the line about no longer being her lover’s muse. Cooper watches him in silence as he whispers the words back to her and wishes, not for the first time, that Blaine could have been born straight so that perhaps their parents might notice him crumbling, instead of pretending he’s a bomb that they’re just waiting for the disposal unit to rid them of. Whatever it is Blaine thinks he’s done, it wasn’t to spite anyone. Cooper understands (and knows he’s part of it) that Blaine doesn’t cope well alone, that he needs constant validation, and that he doesn’t get it from the people he should. He’ll call it loneliness, but Cooper thinks of it as more of a desperate reach for someone – anyone – to touch him and make his life make sense. (And choose his accessories, because bow ties and boating hats are a Kurt thing, not a Blaine one.)

“Talk to me, squirt,” he says gently, and Blaine presses his lips into a thin line.

“Don’t call me that,” he says and then, apropos of nothing, “Have you ever done something so bad you can’t apologise for it?”

Cooper glances at him sidelong before staring back at the road ahead of him. Truth be told, he actually has done a lot of things he’s immeasurably sorry for but for which there is no apology. He’s got a lot of things he wishes he could take back and will never be able to, not least of which is the way he’s treated Blaine for years. He honestly suspects the same is not true of his baby brother, though. He shakes his head anyway, because he needs Blaine to keep talking and this isn’t about him. Blaine nods slowly and forces a tight little smile of triumph.

“I hurt him, Coop. I was with another guy and it – it didn’t even mean anything, I was just – ever since Dalton, I’m so fucking scared and I don’t know what I was doing but he saw _me_ and was nice to _me_ and I -”

“Blaine! Blaine, slow down, breathe for me, buddy. With another guy?”

Blaine heaves a breath and stares at him rigidly. “At his house!”

“Okay, but with him means what?”

“I hooked up with a guy. Who isn’t Kurt. Who’ll never _be_ Kurt.” He chews his lip and squirms lower into the bucket seat, heated leather warm against his spine where his t-shirt rucks up.

“You do know there’s more to sex than hands in questionable places, right?”

Blaine’s ears go pink but his glare is savage when he turns it on Cooper full force. “I’m gay, not a Kewpie doll.”

Which confirms at least one thing, Cooper figures. His baby brother has had sex. He’d hoped when he met Kurt that their casual intimacy around one another meant something. Blaine’s staring at him again, though, amusement creeping through the self-doubt in the vivid gold of his eyes.

“Don’t,” Blaine says, holding up a hand, “I don’t want to picture you getting naked with a girl. I’d really rather you weren’t doing it to me.”

“Oh, you’re not naked with a girl, it’s fine.”

At least Blaine is laughing now. That’s got to be a start.

 

Cooper checks them into a hotel and lets Blaine shower and change before insisting they have to eat. Blaine plays with his hair and whines about Cooper not bringing his gel with him and how his hair goes frizzy without anything in it, and he’ll look like a reject from Hall & Oates. After an unconvincing minute where Cooper pretends not to know which half Blaine is referring to, he ruffles Blaine’s hair and says he looks like a vintage Hollywood reject anyway, so it won’t matter which decade he gets lost in just this once. Giving up on his hair, Blaine straightens his tie and makes a face at himself in the mirror, obviously not entirely comfortable with the boy staring back at him, and Cooper says he looks fine.

“Just fine?”

“Blaine, you look great. If I was your boyfriend, I’d be proud to be seen with you.”

“Even with the hair?”

“There’s nothing _wrong_ with your hair.”

“That’s not what you said when I was six.”

“I was a dick when I was 16.”

“You were a dick when you were 26 as well.”

Cooper laughs at that and shrugs his shoulders and wishes – again – that Blaine could be like this all the time. “I guess I deserve that. Grab your coat. Dad’s buying us dinner.”

“Does Dad know?”

“No. Are you coming?”

Cooper watches as Blaine pretends to give the idea serious consideration, appraises his brother clinically in the cold anonymous light of their hotel room, and realises - not for the first time - that he’s missed seeing Blaine grow up. The boy in front of him is actually almost a man, muscles starting to fill out his slight frame, stubble around his jaw where he hasn’t shaved, and his honey eyes look older now than their 17 years should. Cooper knows, in the abstract, about the incident last year that almost left Blaine blinded because their mom called him in (wildly out of character) tears, saying her baby had been the victim of another hate crime, and - when Coop finally got a chance to email him - Blaine said it wasn’t that, it was just a childish prank and besides, it was aimed at Kurt and there was no way he was letting that happen, even if it had ended up costing him his depth perception. Cooper thinks that email was perhaps the first time he really understood that his baby brother was in love, and that email was what prompted the first trip back to Ohio in a long long time because he’d needed to see Kurt with his own eyes. A chance to fix what had been so summarily broken for far too long not withstanding.

“Coop?”

“Hmm?”

Blaine grins at him and Cooper can’t help but grin back. “I said yes.”

“Grab your coat, squirt. We’ll get you something for your hair on the way, if it’ll help.”

The relief in Blaine’s answering smile shouldn’t be as heartbreaking as it is, Cooper think, but it tugs low inside of him all the same.

 

Blaine spends a good half hour in the bathroom wetting and fixing his hair whilst Cooper orders for them and, when he slides back into his seat, he eyes the resulting bowls with some trepidation. “Just eat,” Cooper suggests, spearing a prawn, and Blaine glances back up at him, needing to talk and not knowing where to begin. Instead, he pokes at a mound of sticky rice until it falls apart and then sighs heavily, laying his chopstick back on the table as he avoids Cooper’s eyes entirely. Suddenly, the mere thought of food makes his stomach roll and he darts from the table again, much to Cooper’s consternation.

The third time he sits down, he spoons rice and chicken into the bowl in front of him and Cooper watches him carefully, decides he looks pale and tired and, at 17, far more drawn than he has any right or reason to look. “Can you at least tell me his name?” he asks, and Blaine looks up sharply before returning to poking his food experimentally. When he finally grips his chopsticks properly and pops a piece of chicken in his mouth, Cooper knows he’s avoiding answering the question. They have all evening, however, and when it comes to his little brother, Cooper is discovering a deep well of patience and empathy that he has never before had reason to tap. Once Blaine has finished chewing he fixes his eyes on his food, scanning for anything else he can face putting in his mouth without the risk of gagging, and Cooper asks again, watching him closely as he lays down his chopsticks again and scrubs his hands across his face, covers his eyes as he sighs a name, lost in the exhalation.

“Blaine,” Cooper says, reaching across the table to uncover his face, ducking his head until Blaine has nowhere else to look but at him.

“Eli,” he repeats, still almost too quiet to decipher. “His name is Eli.”

“And how do we know Eli?” Cooper ask, causing a sick look to flash across Blaine’s face again.

“Facebook,” he breathes, picking at his food once more, pushing rice around his bowl before picking up a helpful fork to eat it with, chewing methodically once more because it keeps his mouth too occupied to talk. Cooper allows the silence to stretch, until guilt flares on Blaine’s face again and he ducks his head, staring at his fingernails as he picks at them. Cooper is on the verge of telling him it doesn’t matter when Blaine starts talking again, halting and clipped, but talking nonetheless.

“I - that is we - he sent me a request. We found ourselves on the same side of the marriage debate and DOMA and what this all means for boys like us, and I guess he knew I was - am - gay because - I don’t know, but he must have known after, because Kurt, because it says I’m in a relationship, with Kurt, that he’s - was - is - I don’t know, Coop. But we got chatting one night, and he’s funny and kind and he likes the same things I do, and I guess - I don’t - I really like him you know? As a friend. But then Kurt left - I told him to leave, I guess I thought it would be easy, that we could do the phone calls and the Skype thing and it would be enough to tide us the few months until we’d have enough time or money to make the trip to see one another - but it was so hard, and I was lonely. I couldn’t go from having Kurt to having nothing, and Eli is a shameless flirt,” Cooper nods here, encouraging, and silently assesses that Blaine probably gets hit on a lot and simply doesn’t notice until it’s entirely blatant and far from innocent, “And I guess I was flattered because I’m easily pleased,” Cooper is doubtful on this score as well; Blaine has been dating Kurt for over a year, and Kurt isn’t the kind of boy to settle for easy, “Or, I don’t know, but the next thing I know I’m sitting on his bed being talked down from the edge of a panic attack, and I don’t - I can’t remember anything, except that I went there willingly, knowingly, and it’s a mess. It’s this huge tangled-”

“Have you spoken to him since?”

“No,” a beat, and then, “He sent me a message, asking if I got home okay, checking that I’m fine, and I told him I wasn’t dead or anything, but I can’t - I can’t be his friend, not now. He’s tried since, and I can’t just delete him, so I’ve ignored it or just, I’ve tried being polite? Oh, God. What if he thinks we’re a thing?”

“Blaine-”

“No, don’t, don’t say it’s nothing, not now. I know I did _something_ with him and I can’t just _forget it._ ”

“What if you didn’t and you’re ruining a sure thing with your teen angst?”

“Coop, I know something happened.”

“So you kissed a guy who isn’t Kurt, Blaine. It’s not a mortal sin. A serious lapse in judgement, yes, but something you need to talk to Kurt and Eli about. Because you said you told Kurt you hooked up-”

“I did!”

“You didn’t, not like he means it!” Cooper tries a smile, but it flickers and fades at the look of clinical self hatred emanating from Blaine’s usually warm, inviting gaze. “And you’ve left this other kid hanging as well,” he continues, because Blaine needs to hear it. “You need to tell Eli, unequivocally, that you’re not available, that you’re not like the other boys he’s hooked up with. He needs to know you have a boyfriend, that you love him, and that it’s immutable. There are plenty of boys out there that will settle for random anonymous sex. Don’t let yourself be one of them.”

“I don’t think he’s that boy either, Coop,” Blaine protests weakly, and Cooper reaches for his hand, his smile sad and understanding in a way that only comes from years of meaningless relationships and almost-anonymous sex.

“No, Blaine. That’s why he made a move on a boy he knew was unavailable.”

Silence, and then, “Oh.”

Cooper offers him another smile and pushes some food toward him. “Eat something, kiddo,” he says, and watches closely until Blaine shovels some rice into his mouth. It’s not ideal, and he’s not happy with Blaine’s mindset, but at least there’s a base to start from.

 

In a way, Cooper thinks it’s their parents’ fault that they’re both like this, that they both crave physical gratification and constant validation at the expense of their emotional well-being. Their parents were, and have remained, emotionally distant. For all their hopes of grandchildren and daughters-in-law, they were never accessible as their children were growing up. They both learned young that you say ‘I love you’ loudest and clearest when you say it with your body. Blaine has always had better control of himself, though; he learned the hardest way of all that ‘I love you’ (or even, ‘I like you’) is a minefield when you’re - for boys like him. Social justice meaning nothing to 15-year-old boys. Even so, Cooper had dared to hope that perhaps one of them would make it through their teens without losing themselves in the need to be soothed and quieted. Perhaps, without New York in the mix, one of them might have. Cooper knows that Blaine is, at heart, a silly romantic who believes in love and marriage and happily ever after, and he knows that Blaine - without absolution from Kurt - will hate himself for a long time to come. Cooper knows the feeling disturbingly well. He’s lost count of the number of women he’s given parts of himself to, but none of them have hurt as much as the first, and he’s hurt none of them as badly as he had her. A decade later, there’s still nothing he regrets more. The last thing Cooper would have wanted for Blaine was for him to learn this way that he has to protect his heart as well. 

Cooper has a lot of time to think as he lays in the dark of their hotel room - another unknowing gift from their dad’s wallet - staring at the pale yellow light that’s creeping underneath the bathroom door. If Cooper hadn’t already been awake when Blaine slipped from his bed and closed the door behind him, he’d have no idea that there was anything wrong. Blaine’s been in there for upwards of an hour now, though, and Cooper is undeniably concerned. As the beginning of the second hour comes around, Cooper eases his own sheets back and presses his ear to the thin plywood of the bathroom door. There’s nothing for a moment, and then the hushed whisper of Blaine’s voice - raw even at this volume - saying that he matters as well, that his feelings count too, and he’s never _been_ this alone, or this lonely, and he’s sorry, and he knows it isn’t an excuse and he knows it’s not your fault (Cooper can only assume it’s Kurt) and he knows one phone call won’t mend what’s broken, but can they at least _talk_ , mano a mano... He tails off then, presumably to listen, and Cooper slides away from the door with a small smile on his face. It’s not resolution, but it’s a start.

When Blaine emerges into the darkness of the room at little later and slides cautiously into Cooper’s bed in a way they have never done, Cooper has the decency to squeeze his shoulder and pretend he can’t see the freshly scrubbed pinkness of Blaine’s skin when he’s lying this close. “Your feelings matter too, squirt,” he murmurs, and Blaine hums a response into his pillow as he closes his eyes. Blaine’s not right, but he’s okay.

 

**FIN**


End file.
